Colt Country | Home of The Almighty Colt

So I live in St. Peters, MO, and I'm having a small problem with finding a good place to shoot.

In the past I would just go to Busch Wildlife, but unfortunately the range there isn't great for black powder. The 15-minute shooting intervals don't give you much time for loading, (particularly with cap and ball) ESPECIALLY if you run into any sort of mechanical problem. I will also be teaching my nephew to shoot beginning this spring, which makes Busch's rigid timetable even less ideal because there's not a great deal of time for both instruction AND shooting. Even if I start him on my old CVA muzzleloader carbine (which would also give me a chance to shoot my dad's Hawken rifle).

Last weekened I checked out the unstaffed range at Reifsnider State Forest to give that a try. I arrived around 9:30 in the morning. At that time, it was just me and two other stations active. I certainly liked the freedom of being able to just set up and shoot at my leisure without having to worry about getting interrupted unless we all agreed to cease-fire. However with it being first-come first-served, you're at the mercy of the crowd. There's simply not a lot of stations, and the downside of no time limit is that you could be waiting forever for a turn at the bench (by the time I left, the line was queued all the way up the hill. And no social distancing, either :-P ).

There's also another big problem with ranges like these:

@$$HOLES WHO CAN'T FOLLOW THE RANGE RULES.

Despite the posted rules at the range being the same as any of the MDC staff ranges (limits to the number of people at the bench, no automatics, no rapid fire, magazine size limits, etc.) it was pretty much the Wild West while I was there:

The group next to me had a good half dozen or more people crowded into the bench. One of them was teaching his girlfriend or whoever, which ok, that's fine. But you don't need all ten of your other friends piled in there with you.

One guy came in (with his five year old kid!!!) and had something like a 50-round drum magazine. And he emptied the ENTIRE THING in about 20 seconds. Many other shooters were also ripping off as many shots as they could as fast as they could. I don't know if any of these were automatics, but they were sure shooting like they did (my guess: bump stocks). It's not just that rapid fire like that frankly just isn't safe. It's ANNOYING AS HELL to be trying to do my thing, when from the next stall over is Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow! It's a distraction, and makes it hard to get the rest of the range's attention in an emergency.

It's especially important to me that my nephew learn both proper gun safety and handling, AND good shooter etiquette. But I don't feel safe taking him to an unstaffed range with that kind of nonsense going on. And while I COULD use it as a teaching moment, ("See what they're doing? Don't do that.") personally I'd rather not have to deal with it in the first place as it's a needless distraction from keeping track of what he's doing. Especially since he has never fired ANY sort of gun, much less black powder.

I was wondering if any of you are in the St. Louis/St. Charles area and might know of a range nearby that might be a better choice. Somewhere that facilitates the slow loading times of muzzleloaders and cap and ball better than Busch or Henges, and where I'd be able to take the time to teach my nephew without having to worry about running out of our allotted time. But at the same time, somewhere I don't have to worry about idiots pretending they're Rambo and who act like the rules of the range don't apply to them.

I don't have a particular desire to join a club; I don't know if I'd be out there often enough for the yearly dues to make it worthwhile, or that my schedule would allow any sort of mandatory meeting/work/competition days.

 So today I took my 1860 Army out to shoot for the first time. I had four packs of paper cartridges from Buffalo Arms (Hornady round ball and 28 grain powder) and a bag of loose Johnston & Dow conicals. My powder flask was loaded with Goex FFFg, and I had two spouts with me: one for 25 and one for 30 grain.

The paper cartridges loaded and fired no problems at all. They popped in quick and easy, and I had no problem seating them with the lever. However the problem came after I shot through the paper carts and moved on to the conicals.

I loaded with 25 grains of powder, and when I tried to seat the ball it stopped with about a quarter of an inch protruding from the top of the cylinder. It would absolutely not go any further.

After ten or so minutes of digging the ball out (thank you, soft lead) I  thought, "well maybe it's fouling from the paper cartridges." So I ran a bore brush through the cylinder chambers to clean them out a bit and tried again. No luck. The ball sticks about quarter of an inch out, and I'm pulling down on  the lever as far as it will go. At that time I got fed up. A line was queuing at the range, and I didn't have a smaller powder measure with me to try a different load, so I packed up, dug the ball out when I got  back to my car, and came home.

So...what's the deal?

Mine is a Second Generation Colt, not one of the reproductions. My understanding was that the 1860 Army could take up to 30 grains of powder with the Johnston & Dow ball (I believe it was made using the Era's Gone mold). Mesa Winds' cartridge former for the Army is designed for 30 grain with the Johnston & Dow. Cap And Ball's former has a smaller charge, but is still 24 grains of powder (can't believe that 1 grain of powder would make THAT much difference). And there's plenty of videos and blog posts out there of people shooting J&D cartridges loaded with 30 grains of powder.

This is my first time trying to load conicals in a cap and ball revolver (I also have an Armi San Marco 1851 Navy). I didn’t lubricate the ball before loading (I intended to lube the front of the cylinder) so I don’t k is if that would make a difference.